Red Sox Journal: Cherington defends the signing of Drew

Tuesday

Jun 10, 2014 at 7:55 PM

BALTIMORE — Criticism of the signing of Stephen Drew to a midseason $10-million deal began the moment he put pen to paper, and it has only grown as Drew has gone 1-for-14 in his first four games and then...

Brian MacPherson Journal Sports Writer brianmacp

BALTIMORE — Criticism of the signing of Stephen Drew to a midseason $10-million deal began the moment he put pen to paper, and it has only grown as Drew has gone 1-for-14 in his first four games and then missed back-to-back games with stiffness in his oblique.

But Ben Cherington expressed no regrets about the acquisition.

“He’s only played four games,” the Red Sox general manager said. “It seems pretty early to make a judgment on that one. We all know Stephen Drew is a really good major-league player. We all know how good he is. We knew he was stepping back on a major-league stage, seeing major-league pitching, and we wouldn’t be a little bit surprised if it took him a little while to get the timing back and get comfortable. But we signed him because we thought it would make us better over the course of the season, and we still feel that way.”

Hall of Fame reporter Peter Gammons said first on Twitter and then on Boston radio that he believed media pressure had all but coerced Cherington into signing Drew, pushing Xander Bogaerts to third base.

Cherington responded forcefully to that insinuation when asked about it on Tuesday at Camden Yards.

“False,” he said. “I was really surprised to see that. We know Stephen Drew really well. We signed Stephen Drew because I made a recommendation to ownership to sign Stephen Drew.”

As Drew lingered on the free-agent market and as youngsters Will Middlebrooks and Bogaerts underperformed, the Red Sox already had discussed bringing Drew back.

But those discussions increased in urgency when Middlebrooks suffered a broken finger on May 16, an injury that had kept him even from swinging a bat until last weekend. There’s still no timetable for his return. Drew signed a one-year deal with the Red Sox on May 20.

Signing Drew gave the Red Sox a proven major-leaguer who they knew well from last season — and at the cost of only money, not the type of minor-league talent they might have needed to make a similar addition via trade in June or July.

“We felt like, if we didn’t sign him, we might be in position to have to make a trade at some point and give up talent to address, potentially, an area of need,” Cherington said. “We have a guy who we trust, who we like, who’s a good player, who’s a trustworthy player, who’s been here and done that, who’s available to sign without giving up talent, so we did it. I made that recommendation, and I would make that recommendation again.”

Bradley sits again

For the second day in a row, manager John Farrell wrote out a lineup in Baltimore that had Grady Sizemore rather than Jackie Bradley Jr. playing center field.

After a three-strikeout game at Detroit on Sunday night, Bradley is hitting .203 with a .286 on-base percentage and .294 slugging percentage. He’s swinging and missing more than even he can comprehend. The mechanics of his swing have been the focus of extra work before the last two games.

“This is a couple of days for him to catch his breath a little bit,” Farrell said. “We felt like he needed a couple of days to regroup.”

But that doesn’t mean that Bradley is on the verge of losing his job.

“We feel he’s the right guy to be our center fielder,” Cherington said.

Still, that Bradley has looked overmatched against major-league pitching has contributed to the overall malaise of the offense. That Sizemore is hitting .218 with a .286 on-base percentage and .328 slugging percentage naturally raises a question: Did Boston do enough to fortify the center-field position after Jacoby Ellsbury left?

“We felt that we did have enough depth,” Cherington said. “To this point, we haven’t gotten the production out of the outfield that we need to. We still feel like we can, and it’s up to us to figure that out.”

Can’t keep him down

The more Brock Holt plays, the more he looks like an indispensable part of this Red Sox team. He’s made the move from third base to first base to left field in the last several weeks — and he might add to his defensive portfolio even further.

Holt has taken fly balls in center field, Farrell said Tuesday. Holt actually did his first work in center field last week before moving over to left field — a position he’d never played but has handled surprisingly well so far. He made an acrobatic catch against the fence in Detroit on Sunday and tracked another fly ball back to the warning track against Baltimore on Monday.

“We wouldn’t be hesitant to move him to center if the situation called for it,” Farrell said. “If we get into a late-innings situation where, let’s say, we end up pinch-hitting and we end up moving him to center field, those are all possibilities that we would be open to right now.”

Holt didn’t make the Red Sox roster out of spring training, but he’s become a sparkplug since his April call-up. He’s hitting .339 with a .380 on-base percentage and .475 slugging percentage.

Machado suspended

Baltimore’s Manny Machado received a five-game suspension and an undisclosed fine Tuesday for tossing his bat in Sunday’s game against Oakland.

He has appealed the suspension, which allowed him to be in the starting lineup on Tuesday against Boston.

“I don’t want to be down for five days,” Machado said. “We’re just going to go ahead and get that done, and that’s it. Need to try to help out this team in any way.”

Machado let his bat fly toward third base after swinging at a pitch from Fernando Abad in the eighth inning. The bat-toss came during a plate appearance in which Abad threw successive high-and-tight pitches. After the bat went soaring, both benches emptied. Machado and Abad were ejected. Abad was fined but not suspended Tuesday.